Monday, July 23, 2012

Well, as I made a one hour drive home, I missed two bits of baseball news. One, the Yankees acquired Ichiro in a trade. Good for them. The other more pertinent news to us is that the Marlins traded Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante to the Tigers. In return the Fish get three prospects and a compensation draft pick, a pretty nice haul. Predictably, fans went nuts on Twitter instantly, some complaining about the Marlins usual selling of good players, others making uppity comments about how this is a good move. I wont pretend to know anything about the prospects, so instead I'll let Dave Gershman be our guide:

I’m very impressed with what the Marlins were able to acquire here. Rob Brantly and Jacob
Turner are both, for me, top 50 prospects. Brantly is one of the best catching prospects in the game and Turner is one of the best pitching prospects. The Marlins get both of the two for a guy who they weren’t going to re-sign and Omar Infante, who doesn’t have as much trade value as he has had in the past.

Sounds good to me. The key to me is who the club jettisoned. Omar Infante's trade value will probably never be higher than it is now. He's a very capable fielder and is putting up better than average numbers at the plate. Still, he's not a cornerstone of any team (especially being over 30). I love Anibal Sanchez, but it seems the contract negotiations between he and the club always end up at an impasse. The upsetting tidbit is that officially signals the Marlins as sellers and this season is shot, but hey, who didn't know that already?